


Whispers

by OnlytheSecondSon



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2773460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlytheSecondSon/pseuds/OnlytheSecondSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian Pavus is full of fear (not to mention the hurt, the guilt, the shame, the longing, and the doubt...), and the attentions of a certain strapping Inquisitor, whilst truly equisite, are not really helping. </p>
<p>Fortunately, Dorian Pavus is also an expert at keeping his feelings hidden, presenting a well-maintained mask to the world at large, and sometimes even to himself. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, one of his companions is an expert at finding those feelings, and whispering them out loud...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Moment you met him

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS for the Dorian/Inquisitor romance. Haven't played it through yet?? You really, really should.
> 
> The party banter between Dorian and Cole is quite literally heartbreaking, and I found myself wondering what would happen if Dorian gave up trying to get him to stop, and one night in the Herald's Rest, Cole whispered out the whole story of Dorian's feelings about the Inquisitor.
> 
> So much angst. Maker forgive me.

_You've been afraid since the moment you met him._

 

_Fear, and anger, burrowing beneath your skin,_

_Where everything was red and raw already,_

_Full of hurt, aching like an old wound that wouldn’t heal._

_Because the best of you was failing, and love, love was bringing blindness and ruin to everything that you had thought could be better._

_Why did love always do that?_

_Love, always making you good at hurt._

_Building it carefully, layer upon layer, filling up the empty spaces inside._

_The spaces are dangerous. Cynicism, safe._

 

_But there was still love there, even if you wished it wasn't._

_You wished and wished._

_But it **was** still there, and so you had to help, because the world was going mad._

_But helping meant staying, and watching, as love twisted power into weakness and turned the blackness to a terrible red._

_Red, burning, ready to consume the whole world._

_Staying there hurt almost as much as leaving had._

_When you left, pacing cobblestones, tasting anger and blood. The man with your eyes had finally broken everything. Shattered trust and love and left you reeling._

_Yet here you were again, watching another father turning love into blood._

_And then he came, and he stood before it all and didn't blink._

_And cracked more jokes than you did._

_Lifting away some of the hurt, fear that gripped, lightening a little, then tugging for different reasons._

_All the helpless horror. Galling, crushing, stupid helplessness. **He** could stop it when you couldn't. He could stop it._

_And he did._


	2. The Moment you fell for him

Fear had tugged a little, insistent even as he lightened it, suddenly getting bigger and bigger, because he was handsome too. 

Strong and fast and unfairly strapping, looking at you sometimes in a way you knew too well.

And you wanted him to.


	3. The Moment you tried

_So you piled more hurt back on top of the fear, twisting it into yourself, making good the stories accidentally learnt but embedded so deep_

_It's never about love. You don't have to care, not too much._

_Of course he wants you. Who wouldn't?_

_He thinks it's fun to tease. Two can play at that game._

_But games aren’t what you want._

_Never what you wanted, but the only thing you could ever have._

_You don't want his smirks or his sarcasm The way he stands deliberately too close when you're alone._

_Making your heart beat faster, a drum in the empty spaces, drowning out the rest of the world, inside and out._

_You don't want it._

 

_Well, you do, but wanting it hurts._

_Twisting inside, tugging at the spaces you won’t let yourself fill. Spaces haunted by hurt, things that were broken and can never be fixed._

_Wanting more, so much more, and knowing you can't. Mustn't._

_Memories of blood that was never spilt, only because you walked away._

 

_Still screaming inside, even after everything._

_You always have to walk away._


	4. (Really, really, tried)

_Here you can be so open it's funny. So funny, so funny, but it doesn't make you laugh._

_Just another smirk, the curve of a smile not really there._

_The flaunting and the flirting._

_The joy of raising eyebrows, but never swords, never staffs._

_There’s still this though, that must be hidden. All over again._

_Otherwise it will be swords, staffs, or eyebrows just as dangerous._

_The trouble is, he's... kind to you too._

_Seeking you out when you bury yourself in the library, even when there's nothing to say._

_Not realising how stupid he's being._

_As though he's never played this game before._

_Giving you so much power, making it so obvious, not listening to the whispers._

_The one who can save the world, lead it, change it._

_He risks it all to get you back a memory, a connection to a place that isn't even worthy of his thought._

_The anger beats hot inside of you, burning against the spaces where the hurt used to be._

_Threatening to break down the walls and swallow them up._

_Then it’s all drowned by fear again._

_And the guilt, echoing in empty halls, knowing how the world will turn._

_But when you face him, in the quiet with the smell of books and singed dust and candle wax, for a moment the spaces rush up and block out all the things you know._

_Afterwards, the guilt gnaws, a constant ache that grows and grows because you know you won't stop yourself now._

_Even though you really should._


	5. The Moment when... Fasta vass, it all went downhill from there

_You dull it, try to overwhelm it. Twisting the hurt in deeper._

 

_He won't care anyway, after._

_It's only a game._

_The stories are all true, and he's playing just as well as you, to get what he wants._

_Forget that he was kind. Pretend to forget. Pretend it doesn't mean anything at all. Tell part of yourself to pretend, at least._

_And afterwards will be afterwards, with all the nights of tortured recollections that you're already dreaming of, back to saving the world and trying to be better than the stories._

_Or maybe you'll outplay him. He'll admit that he just likes to look at fire, he doesn't want to get burnt._

_Doesn't want to be branded, scorned, judged._

_It was never games that you wanted, but that was all you could ever have._

_So you put on your best game face. Who could resist it?_

_Whispers, and smiles, putting everything into seductions that you know can turn legs to jelly._

_Trying to ignore that just being in his chambers makes your own legs unsteady._

_And when he turns, he's smiling, and his eyes are burning, and you don't hear a word he says._

_You heart stops beating, this time. All the throbbing on the outside, insides light as air._

_Full of empty space._

_All the fear._

_And the layers of hurt that have knotted into tangles._

_And the fear._

_And the guilt that rushes up like a tide, the shame that you can't unlearn, and oh, the fear._

_All gone._

_[In the space it leaves, there are burning eyes, and a smile._

_And laughingandkissingandgaspingandbreathingandpullingandholdingandclingingand_

_lettting go.]_


	6. The Moment after

_Then there is afterwards._

_It starts with the fear. Hollow in your stomach like a sickness._

_So that you have to stand up and walk around, reluctantly shaking off the tangled sheets like a dream on the edge of wakefulness._

_Trying to summon the anger or the hurt._

_To pile them on top, to make the layers that stopper the gap._

_But you can't, and the fear lets the sadness bloom, right there in the pit of your stomach._

_And when he looks at you he sees it._

_Of course he does._

_So you lay it out and wait for him to smile, and agree._

_It's not about love. You don't have to care, not too much._

_Why would you play a game except to have some fun?_

_And then there's only silence._

_The hope in your chest finally becomes more painful than the fear in your stomach, so you look up and see his eyes, still burning. But not smiling._

 

_You look up and see that for all the teasing, and joking, luring you into using all your best lines and pulling out all the stops, there was never a moment when he even considered that this was anything less than everything._

_Not a game-playing bone in his ridiculously strapping body._

_And suddenly fear is everything again._

_But, it’s different._

_The fear that you could be exactly what the world will say you are. Exactly as the stories go. You could hurt him, use him, ruin it all._

_You could, and he might even let you._

_And you know there are no words you can say. They'll be cutting, teasing, and that could mean anything._

_So you fight the fear away._

_Go back to bed, smooth the sheets, and try to tell him all the things you can't say._

 

_You will never let the fear drown him._

 

_Or the guilt, or the shame. The layers of hurt so carefully crafted to tangle up inside, turning the dangerous spaces to bitterness._

_The anger is back too. A new fury, burning hotter, brighter._

_Fury at the idea that those things could ever touch him._

_Not when you’re there._

_You can make sure he never even thinks of them. Never needs them. Never hears them whispering.  
_

_Empty spaces still so full of danger.  
_

_But it doesn't matter, not for him._

 


End file.
